Ocean Plastic Pollution

Plastic pollution in the oceans is a huge environmental problem. By some estimates eight million tons of plastic enters the marine world every year becoming concentrated in gigantic garbage patches (gyres), the largest one between Hawaii and California. Innovative investigators are working to develop technologies that will reduce or eliminate this toxic mess that contaminates water, strangles birds and marine life, and enters the entire food chain as microscopic bits of petroleum-based chemicals. Research by two young students led to a new bacteria capable of degrading plastic biologically in the ocean itself.